


A Kiss Goodnight

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [135]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Affection, Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avenger Reader (Marvel), Avengers Tower, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nighttime, Reader-Insert, Stark Tower, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: You thought it was a secret, the way you sometimes snuck out to sleep in the sitting room in the dark of night. But someone knows. And they’re tucking you in.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [135]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 16
Kudos: 249





	A Kiss Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I know I've written approximately forty-seven billion lullabies where you fall asleep on a couch! I'm sorry! But someone tagged me in [this post](https://grufflepuff-writes-stuff.tumblr.com/post/625736648049704960/ultra-special-blah-hawkeyesex) on Tumblr ages ago and I finally rediscovered it in my drafts! And there are forehead kisses in this one, so I hope that makes it almost varied enough to be enjoyable! <3

Maybe it was kind of a bad habit of yours, but, so far, no one had said anything to you about it. Sometimes it was hard for you to fall asleep in your room in the Tower. There were just some nights where your claustrophobia grew too strong, despite the wide open area of your bedroom. It didn’t make sense, and sometimes you could berate and bully yourself into staying there in your own room, but all too often, the panic drove you out into the larger common areas of the Tower. You would fall asleep on a couch out there more often than you probably should have. You told yourself that it wasn’t really a problem because you didn’t leave your room until it was late enough at night that surely the others had retired to their own rooms, and the rising sun coming in through the windows always woke you up early enough to clear out of there before someone could stumble upon you and feel awkward, but...you knew it was weird. You did your best to reserve this weird habit for the worst nights, the nights where panic tried to choke you.

It took a long time before you realized that anyone else even knew you were there. Sometimes you thought you might have heard footsteps in the silence around you, but when you opened your eyes and searched for the source, you never found anything. And, again, no one had said anything to you. So you wrote it off as maybe a side effect of your dwindling fear and let yourself sleep.

But then you started waking up under a blanket. Your heart sank that first morning, because you knew for a fact that you’d fallen asleep uncovered. You didn’t recognize it. The overall aesthetic of the sitting room was some cross between minimalist and way-too-much-money. Tony did not have throw blankets draped over the backs of the couches. You couldn’t have reached up and pulled one over yourself as you slept, which meant that someone had come in during the night, and they’d seen you, and then maybe they’d gone somewhere else and retrieved a blanket. And you had absolutely no idea who it could have been. 

When you got up, you quickly folded the blanket and draped it over the arm of the couch, and then you fled back to your own bedroom to lie in bed pondering this new development.

That blanket was enough to keep you shut up in your room for quite a while. Sometimes, in the morning, you would scan your teammates’ eyes over the breakfast table and look for anyone who looked a little too annoyed with you, or maybe just who looked a little too smug over knowing your secret. But there was nothing.

Eventually, though, your fear grew too large to be contained within your bedroom, and so you crept out once more into the living room. You laid there with wide eyes for a while, hoping against hope that you’d been quiet enough that no one knew you were here, that you hadn’t disturbed anyone, that nothing would happen overnight. But then, as it always did, sleep washed over you and you stopped thinking about anything at all.

Once again, you woke up tucked safely beneath a blanket.

You did your best, when you slept in the sitting room, to stay awake long enough to catch whoever was doing it so you could apologize to them and ask them if they needed the room to themselves or something. One night, you thought you heard footsteps again, and you tried to drag yourself up from the depths of your sleepiness, but by the time you managed to force your eyes open, the blanket was already on you and the room was empty once again.

You lucked into the discovery, really. One night, a perfectly-time nightmare roused you, left you lying there by yourself in the dark. You were sort of confused at first, trying to convince your brain that it was just a dream, nothing more, when you became aware of a presence beside you. At first, you thought it was something like sleep paralysis: just an illusion conjured by the same stupid fear that had woken youup. You didn’t have the courage to open your eyes this time. If that presence was real, they were close enough to see you looking at them. So you did your best to keep your face neutral, your breaths deep, even as you heard them unfold a blanket and drape it over you. 

Now. You knew, based on how you woke up in the morning, that someone clearly took the time to tuck the blanket in around you. But this person, whoever they were, they did it so...gently. Their hands slid against you as they tucked you in, but you found that you liked it. It wasn’t lecherous or creepy. If anything, it felt more...matter-of-fact. But even so, it made you realize how long it’d been since you’d been touched by someone else. It was nice. When they were finished, you found yourself wanting more. It was over too soon. Did they do this every time they brought you a blanket?

You would have thought that their ritual was over, then, but they continued to hover there beside you. It was growing ever more difficult for you to keep from opening your eyes to see who it was. You heard a quiet sigh—a familiar sigh—and just barely managed to keep from stiffening when you felt them lean down to press a gentle kiss to your forehead. The kiss was so soft, so tender. It nearly brought tears to your eyes. It made you feel so safe there. What on _Earth_?

The person spoke.

It was another language, something that felt unearthly and ancient. It sounded like a language of gods. Of Asgard. Because you knew that voice. It was someone you spent a lot of time with. Someone who had let you in closer than you’d ever thought to expect. Someone who looked at you with amusement and mischief glinting in cool blue eyes and whose smile had always been enough to make your silly human heart stutter in your chest. 

It was Loki. 

Loki was tucking you in and touching you so gently and kissing your forehead and speaking to you in the language of his home. And he’d been doing this for a long time now. Did he hear the way your heart was racing now? He had to, right? He took a certain kind of joy in things like that, in knowing things about you and your body that he really shouldn’t have. 

You didn’t get much sleep that night.

In the morning, if it weren’t for the blanket around you, you might have written everything off as a lovely dream conjured up by your touch-starved brain. You wanted _desperately_ to return the blanket to Loki directly, but you were terrified that it might make him stop looking after you. So you folded it, like you always did, and left it there on the arm of the couch. By midday, it had disappeared, and only then did you realize that you could have set up watch to make sure that Loki was the one who retrieved it.

You tried not to let your new knowledge influence your actions too much. You neither allowed yourself to go out to the sitting room on the nights where it wasn’t absolutely necessary, nor forced yourself to remain locked in your room on the nights where it was. Sometimes you were just awake enough to be aware of Loki’s ritual, and it was always the same. He’d cover you, tuck you in, then bend down to kiss your forehead and allow his lips to brush your skin when he whispered those same words to you. Most nights, though, you slept through it all and woke up cursing yourself in the morning.

It took a long time for you to gather up the courage you needed. You told yourself that, the next time you awakened to his touch, you would tell him so—and thank him. You didn’t want things to get weird. You didn’t want him to feel like he had to turn and run from you. You just wanted him to know how dear this was, and how much you appreciated it. It was extremely likely, you knew, that you’d just ruin everything, but you decided that it was worth the risk. If you didn’t make him flee, you’d be letting him know that you appreciated what he was doing for you, that it didn’t make you uncomfortable. In your deepest heart of hearts, maybe you were hoping that he’d be willing to do something like that for you even when you were awake. He kept himself so distant from everybody else in the Tower that these gentle kisses felt like tiny blessings.

It took a long time, but one night you were awake as he tucked you in. Your heart was racing again, but he didn’t seem to notice it. Maybe he thought you were having a nightmare or something. You did your best not to move when he kissed your forehead, even though it was like your hands were aching to come up to cup his face. He murmured those same words to you and then took a step away. You drew in a deep breath.

“Loki? What does that mean?” You forced yourself to ignore the raspy, froggy sound of your voice and instead sat up a little to make sure he hadn’t disappeared. He was still there. He stood stiff and frozen, but he had not yet run away. You did your best to repeat the words you’d come to know by heart, and you kind of hated the way your unlearned Earthly tongue stumbled over them.

When he turned around to face you, he wore a wry smile that you knew very well. This was the face he made when he was caught in a lie, or in the middle of a prank. He gave you that face a lot. “What are he chances I can convince you this is all just a dream?”

“No way.” You were torn between sitting up to get a better look at him and remaining lying down so you wouldn’t mess up the blanket. You settled for staying where you were but giving him your best attempt at a pleading look. “Please?”

He must have been feeling particularly soft tonight, because after a few moments he let out a long sigh and stepped a little closer to you again. “It’s nothing. Just...an incantation my mother used to say as she tucked me in when I was very small. She told me it was meant to ward off nightmares.” He twisted his fingers together and then gave you a stern look. “I was _very small_.”

It was like he expected you to tease him for the revelation, like it wasn’t the sweetest and most precious thing he’d ever told you. Warmth flooded through you at that, at the realization that the words were meant to keep you safe, and you actually had to blink back the tears that blurred your vision. “Thank you.” What else could you possibly say to him? How else could you possibly express the way he’d made you feel just now? “Loki. _Thank you_.”

He was usually so good at hearing what you tried to tell him beneath the words you used, but tonight he only gave you the slightest little nod. “I’m sorry. I should not have taken such liberties.” For the first time maybe ever, you heard something like shame in his voice. Guilt. Over what? The sweetest kisses that anyone in your life had ever pressed to your skin? It broke your heart. 

And so, even though the idea of saying anything still absolutely terrified you, even though you were desperately afraid that saying anything would ruin the beautiful friendship you had with him, you knew you had to say something. You drew in a deep breath, a shaky breath, and let it out in a puff. “No, please don’t apologize, Loki, it’s...I liked it. I like it.” You forced yourself to look up, to find him in the darkness. “I think I…I like it when you kiss me.”

Silence loomed, deep and dark and threatening. You tried not to think about what you’d just done, about how you’d destroyed this friendship and made him uncomfortable and everything else. He stared at you for a long time. On occasion, you were able to look at his face and make a pretty good guess about what he was thinking. That was probably the thing that made him start to let you in in the first place. But tonight, it was too dark or you were too panicked or he was too stone-faced to let you see anything. Your stomach felt heavy.

But then one corner of his mouth quirked up ever so slightly. A crooked smile was breaking across his face. Heat rushed through you once again and he took several steps closer to the couch. “Then...if that is truly the case, may I have permission to kiss you properly?”

And you nodded.


End file.
